The 42-year-olds of Nozawa Onsen, Japan, on top of the burning shrine. Photographs by David Levene for the Guardian

We don't really "do" danger as an interactive public spectacle in Britain. The closest we get to authentic crowd-based peril is Guy Fawkes' Night, and that's traditionally preceded by weeks of stark televised warnings. What are we scared of? Burning to death? Yes.

If the fire festival I saw in Japan is anything to go by, the Japanese aren't. I was in Nozawa Onsen, a hot spring village and ski resort some four hours' drive from Tokyo in Nagano prefecture. It was January, and there was more snow than I've ever seen in my life, because I've never gone skiing. In fact, on the list of things I've always wanted to try, skiing ranks below pushing a power drill into my eye. Not just because it's clearly a hideous pastime practised by bastards, but because I hate the sensation of sliding on anything. When I put a foot on the ground, I want it to stay where it is. There's an inherent lack of control with skis, or skates - or skateboards come to think of it - that fundamentally appalls me. I can't abide the uncertainty. I'm a risk-aware type.

Back to that in a bit, but first: snow. Tons of the kind of snow that would shut Britain down for 100 years. Here they just get on with it. There's no choice. Snow ploughs work overtime, carving roads back into existence. snow. Approaching by bus is like being ferried through an endless white trench. Then you step out and fall on your arse unless you've got spikes on your shoes – just like I didn't. Thanks to my own ill-prepared idiocy I spent a lot of my time in Nozawa Onsen clinging to walls and drainpipes and worrying about breaking a hip, which slightly undercut the otherwise enchanting snow-dappled storybook visuals of the place.

Safer to try out the baths. As well as compound fractures and death-by-fire (more on that later), Nozawa Onsen offers hot springs, some of them outdoors, many of them free and open to the public. Visiting a Japanese bath is daunting at first. Not only does it involve stripping naked, but there's some fairly strict etiquette surrounding the bath itself, which is for relaxing, not washing. To prove you're clean before entering, you have to strip naked, sit on a little wooden stool, and wash yourself thoroughly using a little wooden bucket. I'm sure it's possible to perform this ritual with dignity. I'm equally sure I didn't. But once you're over this, relaxing in a hot spring bath, surrounded by snow and silence, is an experience that calms the mind almost as effectively as diazepam. Not that I stayed calm: a few hours later I was watching a cackling, drunken mob apparently trying to murder a group of middle-aged men.

Villagers fuel up on sake before attacking the shrine

This was the Dosojin Fire Festival, one of the weirdest public entertainments I've ever seen. As with many insane traditions, it is based in superstition. The ages of 25 and 42 are considered yakudoshi (unlucky) for men, so of course all the 25- and 42-year-old males in the village construct a huge wooden shrine in the centre of the village – it resembles an air traffic control tower made of sticks – every 15 January. They also get astronomically drunk on sake, which helps with what comes next.

As the sun sets, the 42-year-olds climb to a nest-like area at the top, where they stand, singing and chanting. The 25-year-olds form a perimeter and "guard" the shrine (and the 42-year-olds), while all the other men in the village attempt to storm the structure and burn it to the ground.

I discovered all this afterwards. It wasn't entirely clear during the event itself, which resembled nothing less than a terrifying medieval war. From the back of the crowd, I tried moving closer until it became clear my lack of suitable footwear was a potentially fatal inconvenience given the combination of crowds, flames, ice, darkness and bedlam. I tried moving back. After tumbling down countless deep snow banks and slipping on vast expanses of ice – which I suddenly didn't mind, thanks to the free sake they'd been doling out as I arrived – I eventually found some scaffolding and climbed up for a better view. What I saw astonished me. Imagine what would happen if a huge wooden spaceship full of laughing paedophiles landed in the centre of Hyde Park during a snow storm, and a mob turning up clutching flaming torches to dish out some instant justice. It looked like that – but conducted amid an air of good-natured, drink-fuelled insanity.

Father and toddler at Dosojin Fire Festival

In fact the crazed glee with which the hordes trying to burn the shrine down went about their task was almost inspiring. Regard for personal safety was entirely absent. The attackers – one of them had a toddler on his back at the time – lit torches from huge bonfires then barrelled toward the hapless 25-year-old guards, knocking them over, clattering against them with flaming blocks of wood, and hurling blazing projectiles at the precarious wooden structure.

Throughout this often genuinely violent battle, the 42-year-olds continually taunted everyone on the ground, repeatedly hurling armfuls of kindling into the crowd below, all the better to get burnt to a cinder with. It's a gloriously ridiculous celebration of unnecessary risk – the precise opposite of health and safety.

The war between mob and guards went on for some time, the flames inching ever nearer the shrine, until finally the bellowing drunks at the top stopped laughing in the face of death and began scrambling for safety. The guards acquiesced, the torchbearers moved, and soon the entire structure went up, a cross between an oil rig disaster and the finale of The Wicker Man. After an initial roar, the crowd stood and stared, dumbstruck by the intensity of the blaze.

Eventually the flames died down. Dazed, we retraced our steps to the hotel. On the way back I slipped and fell about six times. I didn't notice.

• The Nozawa fire festival takes places on 15 January every year. Charlie's trip was provided by Inside Japan (0117-370 9764, insidejapantours.com). It runs a self-guided adventure from Tokyo to the Japanese Alps, taking in the fire festival, the "snow monkeys" of Yudanaka and the alpine castle town of Matsumoto. It costs £1,400pp (two sharing), departs 9 January. In Tokyo accommodation was provided by Conrad Tokyo, the Peninsula Tokyo, and Mandarin Oriental Tokyo. Virgin Atlantic (0844 209 2770, virginatlantic.com) provided Charlie's flights. Heathrow to Tokyo costs from £655pp return. More information at seejapan.co.uk